What I’ve Been Doing For The Last Year

As many of you have probably noticed in the last year or so, FFU hasn’t been very active!

While I wish I had more time to blog on here because I have a ton of great content and travel tips in my head, all my time has been occupied running TravelMore!

If any of you regular readers remember, last year on April, 14, 2015, I wrote a post on FFU launching my new travel gear company TravelMore.co.

The goal of TravelMore was (and still is) to encourage and inspire people to travel more.

If you ask most people what they really want to do in life, 99% of people will give some variation of the answer that “they want to travel more”, so the goal of the company is to convince as many people as possible to go from wanting to travel more to actually doing it!

TravelMore started off with a few products but over the last 12 months, we have slowly started expanding and started creating our own line of TravelMore products.

Needless to say, the last 12 months have been a wild ride. If you follow me on Instagram, you also know I have fully embraced the “digital nomad” lifestyle and now spend time traveling around the world trying to avoid the cold Chicago winters.

Much of my time in the last year has also been spent developing and refining a new TravelMore product that launched on Kickstarter last week.

We had a modest goal to raise $7,500 but broke that in about 36 hours with no publicity and unexpectedly became the fastest funded daypack in Kickstarter history.

Introducing The TravelMore Jetpack 20L – The Perfect Daypack

In the miles & points community, only a couple of us cover the lowly world of backpacking, staying in hostels, and flying economy class to maximize miles. Therefore no one really talks about travel gear or anything like that unless it starts with Tumi or Rimowa.

I know there are some young people interested in backpacking gear, so as I wrote about last year, I’ve been using the Standard Luggage 40L Carry On Backpack on my backpacking adventures around the world. Even after 20 countries & 30,000+ miles, it has held up extremely well and is great because I can carry all my stuff in it but have no issues carrying it on the plane.

While there are good large travel backpacks like Standard Luggage, one thing I noticed is that there aren’t really any good travel daypacks and most lack basic functionality like being able to hold a water bottle, being water resistant, having enough pockets, or having a laptop sleeve for digital nomads.

In the end it was such a hassle trying to find an acceptable daypack, that I decided maybe TravelMore should try and build the perfect daypack from scratch.

For the design of the Jetpack 20L, we actually started by interviewing hundreds of backpackers / travelers around the world to understand what features they actually needed in a daypack.

Early Jetpack 20L Sketches

After we had a pretty good list of features that travelers actually needed, I had the “pleasure” of going to China for 1 month to try and turn the Jetpack vision into reality.

Once the prototypes were created, we had multiple international backpackers spend over 8 months testing the Jetpack 20L on the road.

The Jetpacks were severely abused and tested traveling over 50,000 miles across Australia, China, Thailand, Nepal, India, United States, Iceland, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

Finally after 8 months of extensive R&D and testing, we finally arrived at a final product that we can confidently say is the perfect daypack.

What Makes The Jetpack 20L Different?

Built For Travelers, By Travelers – Unlike traditional daypacks, the Jetpack 20L was actually designed by people who travel for a living. Every single feature of the Jetpack 20L has been purposefully designed thanks to the input of hundreds of travelers who were interviewed before the bag was designed.

3 Awesome Colors – To combat boring daypacks, we created 3 colors for the Jetpack including blue, black, and purple.

100% Collapsible – When not being used, the Jetpack 20L packs down into itself for easy transport. When collapsed, the Jetpack 20L measures just 8 x 6 x 2 inches and weighs only 12 oz.

Designed For 2016 – Almost everyone travels with a laptop, tablet, or kindle these days, so the Jetpack 20L has a dedicated electronics sleeve that can hold electronic devices up to 15 inches.

Secure & Water Resistant – The Jetpack 20L is designed with ultra strong ripstop nylon that is water resistant. In addition, the Jetpack 20L also has built in YKK zippers that can be locked.

Lots of Pockets – This seems like a no brainer but you would be amazed by how many daypacks only have 1 or 2 pockets. The Jetpack 20L has at 6 separate pockets to hold all your stuff.

365 Year Warranty – All TravelMore products come with the world’s first 365 year warranty. Yes, you read that right, 365 years. We 1000% stand behind our products, so if they break for any reason, customers can exchange them for a new one, no questions asked!

Thank You For Your Support Over The Years + TravelMore Giveaway!

Writing a blog on the internet can be a weird thing because you know there are people reading this but you rarely get to meet readers in real life or interact with them offline.

With FFU, TravelMore, and all the other crazy travel projects I have worked on over the years, I have been extremely fortunate to have been supported by all the awesome people who started reading this blog way back in 2012.

None of these projects would have gotten anywhere if it wasn’t for the amazing FFU community of readers who have supported me over the years, so I just want to say thanks!

To show my appreciation, I am giving away a full TravelMore swag package including basically everything we make.

To enter the contest, just leave a comment saying where you would take your Jetpack (or where you are traveling to next). Please be sure you leave your real email, so I can contact you. I will pick a winner next week.

Basically AwardWallet allows you to connect all your frequent flyer accounts and check the balances all in one place. Sort of like a Mint.com for your miles & points.

I have been using AwardWallet since 2009 and it is hands down the easiest way to track my entire family’s miles and points accounts across all programs.

All in total, my family and I have 73 accounts being tracked by AwardWallet.

Recent Award Wallet Updates

I recently logged in and noticed AwardWallet made some “customer enhancements”.

Some of them are definitely good like the security code check if you log in from a computer that you don’t normally use.

However I don’t know if it is just me but I am not a fan of the new interface.

I get that AwardWallet is trying to showcase that the service is now more secure like a vault but the new interface is so difficult to read because all the individual accounts blur together

FYI if you don’t remember what the old interface looked like, it looked like this.

While it wasn’t cutting edge, there was at least some color contrast between accounts and it was easy to use so I had no complaints.

I am such a fan of AwardWallet that I did actually send them a detailed email telling them how I felt about the new interface and how it could be improved.

Anyway, I sincerely hope AwardWallet redesigns the interface or at a minimum, reverts back to the old look because overall the app is amazing and a lifesaver, it just is very difficult to read at this current moment.

I am curious if other people feel the same way about the “new” AwardWallet?

What I Have Been Doing For The Last 3 Months

If you are a regular reader of FFU, you have probably been visiting the site and noticed that I have been missing in action for the last few months.

People who follow me on Instagram and Facebook know that I have been backpacking around Asia doing the “Banana Pancake Trail” for the last few months.

As some would say, it was my “Eat, Pray, Love” trip where I basically put everything else on hold and went and had the time of my life.

I flew JAL Business there and did 1 entire month (top to bottom) of Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, & Indonesia. Coming home I burned 100,000 Alaska miles and flew Emirates A380 First home!

If you have never done any of those countries or have thought about doing a similar trip, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT!

In a couple more days, I will be sharing what came of all this “introspection” but for now here is a quick recap in photos of the trip.